Fever Dream

Gilad Dor, Nicholas Gregg

Experimental light therapy to induce the participant into a fever dream, and into another persons memories.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rb_0nw89zXBssQv9r7kKd6ZEhq2hsafM?usp=sharing

Description

How can you experience memory; someone else's and your own?

Your perspective is held in a near-ganzfield, with an audio-collage of sounds with an affected spoken narrative happening, guiding you as a second person narrator, sequenced along with a color sequence mapped along channels of LEDs.

Classes

Performing Reality

AR Flooded City

Timmy Zhou

A compact AR installation of a coastal city showing the effects of our rising oceans, and what cities can do about the issue.

https://

Description

The city will be displayed on an area of 16″ x 18″. Users will have access to 13 Marker tiles (9 of which will be double sided) that come together to show the city. 9 Markers make up Scene 1, which is the city in the present day. Flip those over and Scene 2 will display, showing more than half of the city has been flooded and there has been a hasty seawall erected to try and save the rest of the city. Users can then clear those tiles away and use the remaining 4 markers to show the city before it was flooded, but now with various flood infrastructure in place. (Flood protection ideas inspired by BIG's Big U proposal for NYC).

Classes

Comm Lab: Hypercinema

Levitating Lightbulb

Vanessa Chesnut

It's a gravity defying, hovering light bulb that works through magnetic levitation

https://https://vanessachesnutitp.wordpress.com/2019/12/02/final-project-idea-levitating-magnetic-lightbulb/

Description

I wanted to create a piece that not only looks beautiful but which is also interactive. Users will lower the bulb over the magnetic base ( a wooden box) until the LED lights up. The user will begin to feel an upward resistance. When the bulb is positioned exactly at the center of the base, they will feel a gentle release. The electro-magnets will automatically center the bulb in position. Once placed over the box, the bulb will begin to rotate & potentially play music (the Arduino helps it rotate).

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

DYÄD

August Luhrs

DYÄD is a semi-cooperative puzzle game where a couple must navigate the struggles of being in a relationship while decorating their home with IKEA furniture falling from the sky.

https://augustluhrs.art/dyad

Description

Inspired by games like Consentacle, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, Nour, and Fog of Love, DYÄD is a semi-cooperative puzzle game where two people have to decorate their home with IKEA furniture by dropping it from the sky. A shared physical interface allows players to button mash to spawn a fountain of cheap and sleek Swedish design as they attempt to communicate or not about their individual wants and shared goals (but they can only communicate in Swedish…). Each level is a progressively larger floor plan, but each partner in the couple has different preferences as to what color and type of furniture should be in each room. The partners only know their wants however, by consulting a textless assembly manual that is unique to them and starts nearly blank. It is only by trying and failing to play the game with different partners that they unlock new stickers to flesh out their unique assembly manual, learning through reflection how best to navigate future relationships and ultimately succeed with their partner. Though no pairing is the same, through communication, compromise, and playful exploration, the couple can emerge victorious.

Each button interface has multiple LED pushbuttons that change color to indicate different states in-game, and both are connected via TeensyMIDI to Unity. After giving new players their own assembly manual, explaining the game rules (though leaving most interactions/effects to exploration/discovery), and allowing the pair a minute to discuss, the facilitator (me) starts the game in unity.

Classes

Joy and Games

We Are Breathing Lives

David Yang

Treat websites as physical environments, knowing websites impacting people both mentally and physically.

https://itp.nyu.edu/classes/cc-f19-do/we-are-breathing-lives-final-project-proposal/

Description

The project is a digital tree that grow or shrink base on the words it heard from the website. The tree will analyze the audio or reading the text from the webpage and reflect it on its growth. The project will take a digital form of a chrome extension.
The tree is for groups of people that hope to promote consciousness toward the environment they interact with. For example, The chrome extension could allow user to know visually if the website provides helpful comments and positive interaction.
The reason I want to do this is because I remembers an experiment about how environment could impact a person. The most important thing about the environment is its people. If we could be conscious about how our words could shape a place, a conversation, and a person, we might be able to create soil for each individual to growth. Similarly, if we could consciously place ourselves in nutritious environments/websites, we might be able to live a better life.

Classes

Creative Computing

Hedwig & The Angry Inch: Wig In a Box

Chenshan Gao, Maya Pruitt, Raaziq Brown, Woan-Chin LIN

Stage & Video Design for Hedwig and the Angry Inch

https://www.mayapruitt.com/itpblogs/category/Live%20Performance

Description

This is a model of the Belasco Theater at one-fourth sized, designed to replicate a fictional production of “Toy Story 2: The Musical”. Light and video are projection mapped during the song “Wig In the Box” to create a spectacular impact, enhance the story telling, and compliment the actors' live performances.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a rock musical about genderqueer singer Hedwig who searches for her other half in order to overcome insecurities about her identity. Over time, she struggles with trauma, inflicts hurt to those around her, and believes that her own happiness lies solely with her romantic partners. By the end, her belief transforms when she realizes that she is complete as an individual.

Classes

Designing for Live Performance

Axolotl – A Social VR Experience

Guillermo Montecinos, Lydia Jessup

A human and an axolotl – an amphibian native to Mexico – meet face to face, separated by the glass of an aquarium. Fascinated by each other, they learn to communicate and eventually, turn into one another.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z5LiaRY-oI9I1Z4OlpVj7dTlpeg-Nmkj/view?usp=sharing

Description

Axolotl is a social VR experience inspired by the short story by Julio Corázar (of the same name) that allows two immersants to embody a human and an axolotl in a trip where the notions of identity and embodiment may not be as logical as expected.

Each immersant starts as one of the characters – the axolotl inside the aquarium or the human on the outside of the glass. A narrator takes them through a story based on Cortazar's magical realism short story – each from their own perspective. The immersants are able to look at each other and gesture across the glass using their VR controllers. By interacting in this way, the immersants can triggers a process in which they begin to turn into one another. When the transition has completed, they have swapped places, embodying the other character on the other side of the glass. The piece concludes with a final narration concluding the story.

Our goal with this piece is to explore the idea of identity and challenge the human/non-human binary. This project uses the affordances of the VR medium to break rules of time and space and to make the immersants consider their humanity and their reality in a different way through new forms of communication.

Video here: https://vimeo.com/377330942

Classes

Desert of the Real: Deep Dive into Social VR

Read the Room

Anna Gudnason, Rashida Kamal, S.J. Zhang

Read the Room allows a group of people to watch political debates and post their reactions to a sentiment meter for each candidate.

https://debate-room.herokuapp.com/

Description

Read the Room allows guests at private debate-watching parties show their feelings about the debates candidates by upvoting and downvoting as they watch. Guests can vote whenever they feel moved to do so, meaning that the displayed sentiment is a sort of live “pulse” showing how the room is receiving the most recent words and actions of each candidate.

Classes

Understanding Networks

Comb the Tree

, Siyuan Zan, Tianjun Wang

Using projection mapping and music interaction to make human and tree communicate with each other

https://

Description

For the music part,the surface of the tree looks very rhythmic, with tracks and irregular block pattern. We want to use the data collected from the surface pattern of the tree to compose the music played when combing the tree. For the projection part, the surface of the tree reminds me of the blood vessels under the skin or the wrinkles on the face.By using noise graphic generated in p5 and communicated with distance sensor,the projection interacted with the comb when someone combing the tree. In this way, the one who comb could feel like they were combing a lively texture and communication with the tree.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

Liquid Relationships

Schuyler DeVos

People use their bodies as a connection that completes a circuit and calms raging waters.

https://lazordiak.github.io/classes/physcomp/final.html

Description

My project begins with a large fish tank that holds a good volume of water. Inside I've put a couple of pumps that are controlled by an Arduino. A circuit with a Tip120 is set up to simulate a haptic connection, such that when people hold two wires a miniscule amount of electricity passes through their body and they complete a circuit. The wires will be attached to hand panels situated on either side of the tank, but too far away for one person to touch both. Participants need to work together–if each of them touches one of the panels and then they touch each other, the circuit will be completed. In this way, people can control the pumps and thus the flow of the water, as well as an LED strip that is underneath the fish tank and will shine up through a piece of acrylic I’ve attached to the bottom.

Classes